Why People Participate in Online Communities

Why do people hang out online and what motivates them to participate in online communities? There are two very interesting studies that provide some insight into the answers of these questions.(continue reading on The Community Manager)

Six functional building blocks of social media platforms

In their paper "Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media" Kietzmann et al. (2011) present a (honeycomb) framework that defines social media by using seven functional building blocks. The blocks are intended to provide a better understanding of the audience of a particular social media platform and their engagement needs: